


loving him was red

by safelikespringtime



Category: Marvel
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Fluff, Halloween, SamBucky2020, Soulmates, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:08:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26954860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/safelikespringtime/pseuds/safelikespringtime
Summary: Sam and Bucky are Soulmates. Alternate Universe. I'm not summarising it any further than that.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Sam Wilson, Steve Rogers/Tony Stark, kinda in the background
Comments: 1
Kudos: 50





	loving him was red

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for sambucky month. The SamBucky2020 tag on twitter.  
> Day 11.  
> Prompt: Soulmates
> 
> I started this probably around this time last year, finished it today.

Everyone used to have a soulmate…but that was centuries ago, slowly as technology grew they died out, to the point that if you saw someone with red eyes that most people would shy away, or if you told someone you did they’d laugh in your face. They were written in the history books, but no longer taught, avoided like fire breathing dragons and wizards, nobody wanted to believe they were real anymore. But they were. They did. But that’s not relevant to our story.  
It was hard when Bucky was born. His parents had decided that raising a child with red eyes was going to be too difficult and cause too many problems. They’d dropped him within the day. He bounced around through foster homes for a few years, most of them avoiding the topic of his “birth defect”. Bucky was 10 when he was adopted by a family in Indiana, Winnifred and George Barnes, and their 7year-old daughter Rebecca…and now James. James had been the name he’d been given at the adoption agency, it was like a John Doe name, most of the kids who were adopted out got something basic like that. They took him in with ease and made him feel at home and loved, gave him the middle name Buchanan, after Winnifred’s grandfather (who had also had a soulmate once upon a time), and legally changed his surname to Barnes. Becca couldn’t pronounce Buchanan and had called him James Bucky for a year before the nickname Bucky stuck.   
As a child he cursed the idea of his soulmate, wishing death upon them, because at least then his eyes would turn grey and nobody would bat an eye, plenty of people had grey-blue eyes and grey eyes could easily pass in that way, wore brown contacts to hide the angry red. He cursed the fact that everything had a hazy glow around it, cursed the way he was bullied and dismissed by his birthparents before they even got to know him. Even at times soon after being adopted by the Barnes’ he had cursed them out, for trying to make him believe that his red eyes were a gift. Just because Winnifred’s grandparents were soulmates and had a lovely family didn’t mean that things would turn out the same way for Bucky. Eventually he grew to accept that part of him. It was a process made a thousand times easier by the Barnes’ ever-loving, ever-watchful gaze.  
***  
“It’s just one party, Buck. I’m begging you,” Steve drapes himself over the back of Bucky’s chair, letting out an exaggerated sigh.  
Bucky wasn’t sure how he’d ended up friends with Steve. After moving to New York he’d gotten a job at a marketing firm, the guy had attached himself to Bucky on day one, apparently hired only a few weeks prior. Scrawny kid, not a few months younger than Bucky was himself, with strawberry blonde swoopy hair and eyes so blue you could drown in them. He’d attached himself on that day and now 6 months later Bucky was kind of glad for it. Well he would be…if Steve wasn’t begging him to attend some rich guys Halloween party.  
Bucky twists in his chair, grabbing Steve’s arm as he topples with the quick movement, “Steve, y’know I’m not a party-person. I’d rather spend Halloween at my apartment with The Conjuring and a bowl of candy I’m pretending are for the trick-or-treaters.”  
“Yeah, I know. You’re boring,” Steve huffs, crossing his arms over his chest, raising an eyebrow that disappears into his hair. “C’mon. I really like Tony and he asked me to come and I don’t know any of his friends. Please.”  
Bucky watches him a moment, rolling his eyes as Steve pouts childishly, all wide eyed and jutted out lower lip.   
“Fine. Just…stop looking at me like that.”

Bucky tugs at the collar of his shirt, glancing again at Steve who is dressed rather impressively as Elle Woods from Legally Blonde, complete with padding, a wig, and a plush chihuahua in his pink purse, and then looks down at his own outfit. A pair of black jeans, a billowy shirt, and a cheap set of vampire fangs. With his red eyes and hair twisted back into something of an old fashioned do, he thought for a last minute costume the vampire worked.  
“This is a private—” the red head dressed as Daphne from Scooby-Doo who answered the door pauses, giving Steve a very obvious once over before it clicks in her expression who she’s talking to. “Steve! I almost didn’t recognise you. You look great, Tony’s gonna be pissed you’ve one-upped him, though. C’mon in, everyone’s already here.”  
“Don’t know anyone, huh?” Bucky grumbles under his breath in Steve’s direction as they’re ushered into the loft.  
“Steve!” a loud voice cuts through the music, accompanied by who Bucky can only assume is Tony Stark, the man Steve’s been swooning non-stop over for the past three months, though he’s dressed as what looks to be Janis Ian.  
Steve beams, draping himself around Tony to kiss him in greeting quickly before turning him towards Bucky, “This is my co-worker and friend Bucky. Buck, this is Tony. We’re gonna go get drinks. Have fun!” he says pointedly, cutting off the introductions there before pulling Tony off in a direction that is decidedly not the drinks.  
Bucky stares after them a moment, blinking in disbelief.  
“Abandoned, rough,” a voice cuts from behind him, and Bucky spins in shock.  
“I’m James. Most people here call me Rhodey,” he holds his hand out towards Bucky, swaying a little.  
“Easy to remember. I’m also James,” Bucky says, shaking the extended hand. “But most people call me Bucky.”  
Rhodey scrunches his nose a little, taking another swig of his beer, “Bucky…I think you need a drink, come.”  
Bucky loses Rhodey at the drinks table, somewhere between picking up his beer and removing the cap the man disappears, and he’s once again standing quite alone in a party full of people he doesn’t know. He sips the drink quietly for a few minutes, blending into the background, watching as people interact, some who look very clearly like they know each other, and others like they’re being introduced for the first time.  
It’s around ten minutes later that Rhodey reappears, this time trailing another man behind him, “Bucky! There you are, I thought I’d lost you! This is my friend Sam…”  
Rhodey’s fades into the background as Bucky meets eyes with his friend. Sam. Something warm and familiar settles in his stomach and it takes him a moment, a minute maybe, or an hour, time seems to stop as they both just staring at one another, before he realises that Sam’s eyes are fading from what had been a very vibrant red into an almost black brown. His throat tightens a little as he parts his lips to speak, then snaps them closed again, because there isn’t anything in the world he could possibly say that would compare to the feeling of this moment.   
“I know you,” Sam is the one to break the silence. Which Bucky realises—it is silent. Every part of the party has stopped, every person previously occupied now on the pair of them, and Bucky wonders momentarily just how long it had been.  
Sam’s voice is like molasses, slow, rich, and sweet, and Bucky feels stuck in it, drawn towards the man. Every negative feeling he’d ever had at the idea of being tied to someone going out the window. Never in his life has he felt so at peace with something than after hearing the sound of Sam’s voice.

A month later Bucky is bringing Sam home to Indiana to meet his family. His mother comments on how bright Bucky’s eyes are, and for once Bucky smiles, knowing that when he looks in the mirror he has warm almost hazel brown eyes staring back at him—and even if he didn’t, Sam would still look at him like he was the most beautiful person he’d ever seen. George gives Bucky a shovel talk—which Bucky thinks is hardly fair, but really can’t blame them for loving Sam more, it’s Sam after all. And Becca teases him relentlessly, before demanding she be maid-of-honour at their wedding. Sam doesn’t say it’s too soon to think about something like that, so neither does Bucky.  
A week after that Bucky meets Sam’s family, and Bucky finds that the whole family is just a whole bucket of warmth.  
It’s September the following year when Bucky hands Steve a wedding invitation at work. A month after that, the day before Halloween, they walk down the aisle at Sam’s family church, Sam’s vows bring Bucky to tears to the point that they take an intermission so he can compose himself enough to say his own.  
“When I was born,” he starts, unable to draw his teary eyes anywhere but Sam’s, “I wasn’t wanted. It took ten years of being passed from family to family before I found my family. They told me my eyes were nothing to be ashamed of, and that I was lucky to be someone with such a deep connection to another person. I was a bitter ten year old with commitment issues so you can imagine how well I took that—  
“I hid my eyes behind contacts and sunglasses, hiding a piece of myself with them. Then I went to a Halloween party. And I was going to pretend they weren’t a part of me, they were a costume. I was at the party for all of twenty minutes when you showed up. I knew…I knew that when you have a soulmate before you meet them everything is kind of hazy. You can still see everything, but it exists with a sort of film over it. I didn’t even notice it was a thing, honestly, until I met your eyes. And then it was like I was being introduced to a whole new world. Everything feels and looks different and even now a year later I find myself looking at things I’ve seen all my life differently because after meeting you…” he hesitates, shaking his head as a thought occurs to him, smiles, and continues.  
“I vow to make every day for you feel as clear as you make it for me. I vow to support you—whether it be in a new work project or trying not to burn pancakes again. I vow to push you the way you push me, to not only be a better person but to believe in ourselves as individuals and not just as the pair we are. I vow to love you every day until we’re both dead—and even in the afterlife because we both know I’m an overachiever, hell I landed you, didn’t I?” he gives a faint laugh, feeling his chest squeeze as Sam continues watching him, all soft gazed. “I love you, Sam Wilson. Universe willing or not, you are my soulmate. Everything that I have ever done and could ever do is made better ten times over with having you by my side. Before you I was existing, now I have you I am living. I can’t wait to experience life with you.”


End file.
